Posts Tagged ‘Corrupt Government’

(Reuters) – Greece’s largest police union has threatened to issue arrest warrants for officials from the country’s European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders for demanding deeply unpopular austerity measures.

In a letter obtained by Reuters Friday, the Federation of Greek Police accused the officials of “…blackmail, covertly abolishing or eroding democracy and national sovereignty” and said one target of its warrants would be the IMF’s top official for Greece, Poul Thomsen.

The threat is largely symbolic since legal experts say a judge must first authorize such warrants, but it shows the depth of anger against foreign lenders who have demanded drastic wage and pension cuts in exchange for funds to keep Greece afloat.

“Since you are continuing this destructive policy, we warn you that you cannot make us fight against our brothers. We refuse to stand against our parents, our brothers, our children or any citizen who protests and demands a change of policy,” said the union, which represents more than two-thirds of Greek policemen.

“We warn you that as legal representatives of Greek policemen, we will issue arrest warrants for a series of legal violations … such as blackmail, covertly abolishing or eroding democracy and national sovereignty.”

The letter was also addressed to the European Central Bank’s mission chief in Greece, Klaus Masuch, and the former European Commission chief inspector for Greece, Servaas Deroose.

Policemen have borne the brunt of the anger of massed protesters who frequently march to parliament and clash with police in riot gear. Chants of “Cops, pigs, murderers!” are regularly hurled at policemen or scribbled on walls.

Thousands turned out Friday for the latest protest in Athens, this time against new austerity measures that include a 22 percent cut in the minimum wage.

A police union official said the threat to ‘refuse to stand against’ fellow Greeks was a symbolic expression of solidarity and did not mean police would halt their efforts to stop protests getting out of hand.

An Open Letter to the Presidents of All Washington State-Sponsored Universities

Presented at a Forum on Budget Cuts in Higher Education

Town Hall Seattle -February 1, 2012

Gentlemen:

You are here tonight to discuss among yourselves and the public draconian budget cuts both proposed and already enacted against all of the public universities in Washington State because of a supposed state budget deficit of $2.5 billion. The fact of the matter is, the declared stated budget deficit is fraudulent, reflecting only approximately one-third of the public monies of which the Washington State government is presently in possession, consistent with current fraudulent public accounting practice in America by most government entities. www.cafrman, www.cafr1.com, www.comprehensiveannualfinancialreport.com

Such a bank, like that which has existed in the State of North Dakota since 1919, would protect this state against depression and unemployment. It would likewise invest our public monies in that which would benefit the people of this state, including investment in higher education, not benefit the international banking cartel, predatory transnational corporations and foreign entities to which, other than US government bonds, 95% of WISB investments are directed. http://nowisthetime.us, www.sib.wa.gov

Of concern is the fact that the WISB is now not only investing our public money in opaque, exotic derivatives and credit default options (CDOs), the most unstable types of financial instruments now extant, but is diverting our public monies to foreign investments in predatory corporations that have committed crimes against nature and humanity. http://nowisthetime.uswww.sib.wa.gov Of concern is the fact that the Washington State legislature, while being fully apprised of the long-standing success of the Bank of North Dakota, has for the past two years failed to create the much-needed Washington state bank, claiming that this first warrants an “official study commission”, while its investment board has been investing in quasi-public banking entities overseas for years. Of concern is the fact that the Washington State legislature is failing to tax or hold sufficiently accountable those transnational corporations in which it has significant investments. Of further concern is the fact that the WISB was in 2006 behind Issue 4215, the unfortunately successful move to amend the Washington State constitution to allow private corporate investment of the monies from the state’s dedicated higher education fund that until then had been held safely in trust. This constitutional amendment, significantly, was passed less than two years before the Wall Street collapse and bank bailout of 2008, resulting in the beginning of the draconian state cuts to higher education now being discussed at this forum tonight. http://nowisthetime.us

Therefore, the most immediate remedy to these cuts to state higher education, both instituted and proposed, would be to divest the state pension and dedicated higher education funds of stock in the corrupt international banking cartel and predatory transnational corporations, to be used to eliminate the supposed state deficit, create a Washington state bank to invest the money of the people in the people of this state rather than everywhere else in the world, and provide immediate ample funding for higher education in the State of Washington, further augmented by proportionate taxing of all Washington State-based transnational and national corporations, including those in which the state government is invested.

- the actual amount of monies taken in by the government through taxation, withholding and other payment methods.

Activists — particularly those who were involved in or closely followed the 1999 WTO Battle in Seattle — would be gratified to know that the Washington State Investment Board also has some $177.5 million* invested in the World Bank, the financial arm of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that the activists in Seattle so powerfully protested, apparently to no avail in regard to the Washington State government.

The Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) is the agency responsible for investing all of the pension/dedicated funds controlled by the Washington State government, specifically the legislature. It openly defines and conducts itself like a private corporation, not a public agency.

“The nation’s largest banks have turned more in profit in the last 30 months than they did in nearly eight years preceding the crisis, all while spending millions to derail significant reform legislation.”

In the lead-up to the financial crisis that crippled the American economy and plunged the country into a recession, the Federal Reserve made trillions in undisclosed loans to struggling banks and financial institutions, according to official documents obtained by Bloomberg News. Six of the country’s largest banks then turned those loans into more than $13 billion in previously undisclosed profits.

The total cost of the Fed loans amounted to $7.77 trillion, and unlike the funds made available by the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the loans came with virtually no strings attached for the banks:

The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.

“TARP at least had some strings attached,” says Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, referring to the program’s executive-pay ceiling. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing.”

In one month, Morgan Stanley — one of the most vulnerable financial companies at the time — took $107 billion in secret loans, enough to pay off a tenth of the nation’s delinquent mortgages. The loans, like those made to other institutions, were never reported to Morgan Stanley’s shareholders or the taxpayers who subsidized them.

Other banks drew similar loans without disclosing them. Bank of America, for instance, held $86 billion in public debt on the day then-CEO Ken Lewis declared his company “one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world.” Bank of America’s Fed borrowing peaked at $91.4 billion in February 2009; at the same time, it benefited from $45 billion in TARP loans.

And even while members of Congress were working to overhaul the nation’s financial regulatory system, the banks and the Fed kept them in the dark about the loans. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), one of the architects of the Wall Street reform act that eventually became law, and former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), the GOP’s lead negotiator on TARP, told Bloomberg they were unaware of the specifics of such loans.

Had Congress had such information, members of both parties would have changed their votes to favor Wall Street reform, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said. Former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), meanwhile, said knowledge of the loans could have led to a push to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited banks from owning investment companies and vice versa, thereby limiting their size and vulnerability to such crises.

The secret nature of the loans, however, instead helped Wall Street work to “preserve a broken status quo” that allowed its biggest banks to grow even larger than they were before the crisis. The nation’s largest banks have turned more in profit in the last 30 months than they did in nearly eight years preceding the crisis, all while spending millions to derail significant reform legislation. And since the Dodd-Frank Act became law, they have spent millions more to weaken its rules and prevent certain regulations from taking effect. Bank lobbying, in fact, is now on pace to reach a record high this year.

Whilst you, Mr. Richardson were blowing smoke up every one’s asses,
I went ahead and pulled your Comprehensive Annual Financial Report
(for the year end 2010 which should roll over into 2011)
and ironically it says you are all in the clear by almost fourteen BILLION dollars…

I would ask you to explain the discrepancy in your accounting practices, but as you should well know, “fuzzy math” and all the bs, irritates me.

FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
•
On June 30, 2010, the assets of the State exceeded its liabilities by $13.6 billion (net assets). Of this amount, $2.1 billion were classified as unrestricted net assets, while $1.8 billion were restricted for specific uses.
•
The State’s total net assets decreased by $482.5 million compared to the prior year. The net assets for governmental activities decreased by 2.4 percent of total governmental net assets, while the net assets for business-type activities decreased by 6 percent of total business-type net assets.
•
As of June 30, 2010, the State’s governmental funds reported combined ending fund balances of $4.5 billion. Of this amount, approximately 32.4 percent was reserved for nonspendable items, such as inventories and permanent fund principal, or for specific purposes, such as debt service. The remainder was classified as unreserved, undesignated fund balance and was available for spending, subject to statutory, constitutional, regulatory, or contractual spending constraints.
•
At fiscal year end, unreserved, undesignated fund balance for the General Fund was negative $542.7 million.
•
Outstanding debt (bonds and certificates of participation) increased by $610.3 million during fiscal year 2010. In March 2010, the State issued $544.7 million of Build America Bonds to finance projects under the Oregon Transportation Investment Act program. The bonds will be repaid with highway user taxes. The State also issued certificates of participation in the amount of $213.8 million to fund the Oregon State Hospital replacement project.

The Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) is the agency responsible for investing all of the pension/dedicated funds controlled by the Washington State government, specifically the legislature. It openly defines and conducts itself like a private corporation, not a public agency.

This body was behind Issue 4215, the successful if disingenuous 2006 initiative to amend the state constitution to allow state monies in dedicated funds supplied by corporate natural resource extraction to be invested in corporate Wall Street investments, instead of being held in trust for higher education. Eighteen months later, the bottom fell out on Wall Street, devastating these funds while triggering increasingly draconian budget cuts and unaffordable tuition at state/community academic institutions.

The WSIB meeting minutes reflect what parties it turns to for counsel during this time of global financial crisis: the main persons listed as present, other than its staff and board of directors, are representatives of the major commercial investment firms of the international banking cartel, such as Goldman Sachs, State Street Global Advisors and Fidelity Mutual Asset Management. Others, such as regular citizens in attendance, are evidently not important enough to be listed in the minutes, just referred to in the aggregate as listed in the permanent agency record that can be obtained by FOIA request.

One distinguished personage recently present at a WSIB meeting was Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State, World Trade Organization (WTO) enabler and war criminal, who unrepentently authorized the international quarantine that killed a half million children in Iraq during the 1990s, the policy of US passivity during the Rwandan genocides and genocidal NATO military action in the Balkans in which the US government was a participant. She was invited to advise the WSIB staff and board concerning profitable foreign corporations, evidently from her vast experience in serving them.

Not one representative of alternative economic thought, such as Steven Zarlenga, Ellen Brown, Catherine Austin Fitts, Richard C. Cook, or Thomas Greco has ever been invited to their meetings, not even State Rep. Bob Hasegawa, the principal proponent for a public state bank, such as has successfully operated in North Dakota for over ninety years. In fact, the WSIB may be one of the quiet movers in a campaign to oust Hasegawa from the legislature by eliminating his present constituency via redistricting, as has been done against US Representatives Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney, who has also taken principled stands against the bank-based international crime syndicate that now controls most of the governments of the world, including that of Washington State.

The WSIB has over $5 billion dollars invested in the international banking cartel, with $34.9 billion dollars invested in the Bank of America, which also manages the state monies, further making hundreds of billions of dollars in service and consulting fees.

The WSIB and Bank of America are, unsurprisingly, two of the chief opponents of the efforts to create a Washington state bank, that, like the Bank of North Dakota for nearly a century, could wipe out state deficts and radically raise employment by substantially raising investment in local economies . For the past two years of severe depression in this state, they have even helped to defeat an effort to create a legislative study commission for a state bank, maintaining that a state bank would violate the Washington State constitution.

The obvious answer to this would be an effort once more to change the state constitution: if the WSIB can help initiate a state constitutional amendment to destroy the finances of Washington State through corporate Wall Steet investments of dedicated funds belonging to the people, the people of Washington State can help initiate a state constitutional amendment for a public state bank that could ensure that the monies of the sovereign people of this state would be invested in the sovereign people of this state, not in the bank-based international corporate crime syndicate that presently controls their surrogate state government .

Despite the grand pronouncements of the Washington State government about its efforts to protect human rights and the environment, the Washington State Investment Board has over $745 billion dollars invested in transnational corporations infamous for violating human rights and devastating the environment of our planet.

For example, the present governor of Washington State, Christine Gregoire, made her national reputation as the former state attorney general who spearheaded the successful multistate mega-lawsuit against the tobacco industry, extracting billions of dollars that could be used by state governments for benevolent purposes. Evidently, one of these benevolent purposes is to invest $_____ million dollars in the tobacco industry that the present governor once prosecuted.

Activists — particularly those who were involved in or closely followed the 1999 WTO Battle in Seattle — would be gratified to know that the Washington State Investment Board also has some $177.5 million invested in the World Bank, the financial arm of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that the activists in Seattle so powerfully protested, apparently to no avail in regard to the Washington State government.

If, therefore, these governments ignore the presence of these hidden funds and persist in enacting genocidal budget cuts to basic human services without applying viable available remedies, they are violating national and international laws.

In Washington State, for instance, if the 2011 Special Session of the State Legislature goes through with the proposed cuts in human services for the People of Washington State, we will bring civil and criminal charges against the Governor, her Budget Director, the State Treasurer, and the Staff and Board Members of the Washington State Investment Board.

The violations prosecuted will be under the following:

US Constitution and Bill of Rights,

the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and

the US Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO),

Officials of other states will be subject to prosecution by the people under these acts, as well as under other various legislation within every other nation’s body of laws.